The Italian pianist Filippo Gorini took advantage of the world health crisis to immerse himself in The Art of Fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach’s unfinished mystical masterpiece: “The view that it should be seen solely as a theoretical marvel is misguided: as the counterpoints and canons evolve in formal complexity, so does their emotional tension, until the heartbreaking mystery of the unfinished Fuga XIV”, says the young pianist, winner of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust prize in 2020, whose first two albums for Alpha have been very well received. In parallel with the release of this recording, Filippo Gorini will launch a website (www.TheArtOfFugueExplored.com), with a documentary series featuring conversations with personalities, films about Bach’s work and more. The young pianist has even gone so far as to write poems and haikus about the work: “We pray in trepidation, / When the blessed night is here…”.

After a first recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations acclaimed by the critics (“Diapason d’Or”, BBC, Guardian, Le Monde) Filippo Gorini, a student of Alfred Brendel and winner of the first Prize and Audience Prize of the Bonn Beethoven Competition in 2015, pursues a fast-growing career. Here he returns to Beethoven and tackles the perilous Sonata No. 29, ‘Hammerklavier’, which the composer himself said would pose a challenge for future generations, along with the Sonata No. 32, which according to Thomas Mann represents the supreme accomplishment of and ‘farewell’ to sonata form.

Supporting new talents is in Alpha’s DNA. Here is the very first recording of the Italian pianist Filippo Gorini, who was recently awarded First Prize in the Telekom-Beethoven Competition in Bonn. He has also won the same competition’s Audience Prize twice over. At just twenty years of age, he has already played in such prestigious venues as the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, Die Glocke in Bremen, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the Moscow Conservatory. Strongly supported by Alfred Brendel, with whom he studies, he has chosen to tackle a monument of the piano repertory, the Diabelli Variations, a work whose interpretation he has matured through frequent performance, notably at the Beethoven Competition where it was the key item in his winning programme. And, appropriately, it is at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn that he made this first disc, the start of a highly promising recording career.